August 1, 2016
JAMES B.McDONALD
Department of Economics
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-3463&
Education
1964B.S., Mathematics, Utah State University
1966M.S., Mathematics,Utah State University
1970Ph.D., Economics, Purdue University
FIELDS OF INTEREST: Econometrics and quantitative economics
Professional Experience
1970-1972Assistant Professor of Economics, Utah State University
1972-1973Assistant Professor of Economics, Brigham Young University
1973-1979Associate Professor of Economics, Brigham Young University
1979-1999Professor of Economics and Managerial Economics
1980-1981Visiting Scholar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
June 1993Visiting Professor, Lingnan (U) College, Zhongshan University, PRC
1993-1996Associate Dean, Honors & General Education, Brigham Young University
2000-2005Professor and Chair of Economics Department, Brigham Young University
2006-Clayne L. Pope Professor of Economics
Honors and Fellowships
Beta Gamma Sigma
Pi Mu Epsilon
Phi Kappa Phi
Sigma Xi
NSF Traineeship
NSF Fellowship
Teacher of the Month (Brigham Young University, 1978)
Distinguished Faculty Award for the College of Business (Brigham Young University, 1980)
Research Support (2 years) from the National Science Foundation (1985-87)
Professor of the Year (Brigham Young University, 1986)
University Professorship (1986-1988)
Distinguished Faculty Lecture (January 1987)
O. Leslie and Dorothy C. Stone Professorship, Marriott School of Management (1988-1993)
Blue Key Faculty member of the month (Brigham Young University, March 1990)
Cougar Groomer Excellence in Teaching Award, Alumni Association, 1992.
Economics Department - Professor of the year (1996)
Robert Mehr Research Award (2002) for 1992 Article in JRI
Brigham Award, Service Award from Brigham Young University 2003
Fellow of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, November 2003
FHSS Achievement in Teaching Award, 2014-2015
Publications and papers
"Some Finite Summation Theorems and an Asymptotic Expansion for the Generalized Hypergeometric Series," Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, 40 (1972), pp.278-85.Coauthored with C. M.Joshi.
"The Exact Finite Sample Distribution Function of the Limited Information Maximum Likelihood Identifiability Test Statistic," Econometrica, 40 (1972), pp.1109-1119.
"An Analysis of the Properties of the Exact Finite Sample Distribution of a Nonconsistent GCL Structural Variance Estimator," Econometrica, 41 (1973), pp.59-65.Coauthored with D.H.Ebbeler.
"An Approximation of the Distribution Function of the LIML Identifiability Test Statistic Using the Method of Moments," Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 3 (1974), pp.53-66.
"On the Existence of the Exact Moments of Three LIML Structural Variance Estimators for the Case of Two Included Endogenous Variables," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 69 (1974), pp.514-21.
"A Pedagogical Example of Heteroskedasticity and Autocorrelation," The American Statistician, 30 (1976), pp.192-93.Coauthored with Bartell Jensen.
"The k-Class Estimators as Least Variance Difference Estimators," Econometrica, 45 (1977), 759-763.
"A Macroeconomic Analysis of Wage Contract Indexation," Journal of Economics and Business, 30 (1978), 201-210.Coauthored with L.D.Israelsen.
"Problems Associated with Estimating Income Population Characteristics," Encyclia, 55 (1978), 86-96.
"Functional Forms, Estimation Techniques and the Distribution of Income," Econometrica, 47 (1979), pp.1513-1526.Coauthored with Michael Ransom. Reprinted in The Economics of Poverty and Inequality, edited by Frank A. Cowell, International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, Camberly Surrey: Edward Elgar Publishing.
"Alternative Parameter Estimators Based upon Grouped Data," Communications in Statistics, A8 (1979), pp.899-917.Coauthored with Mike Ransom.
"An Analysis of Estimators of Alternative Measures of Income Inequality Associated with the Gamma DistributionFunction," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74 (1979), pp.856-860.Coauthored with Bartell C.Jensen.
"A Note on the Distribution Functions of LIML and 2SLS Structural Coefficient Estimators in the Exactly Identified Case," Journal of the American Statistical Association, 74 (1979), pp.847-848.Coauthored with Roberto S.Mariano.
"A Note on the Computation of K-Class Estimators Using a Least Squares Algorithm." Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, 11 (1980), pp.189-196.Coauthored with Dennis Maynes.
"Some Issues Associated with the Measurement of Income Inequality," in Statistical Distributions in Scientific Work, Volume 6--Applications in Physical, Social, and Life Sciences, Editors, C.Taillie, G.P.Patil and B.Baldessari, D.Reidel Publishing Co.: Boston, 1981., pp.161-179.
"An Analysis of the Bounds for the Gini Coefficient," Journal of Econometrics, 17 (1981), pp.177-188.Coauthored with MichaelRansom.
"An Empirical Analysis of the Factors Affecting the Performance of Individual Chain Store Units," Journal of Retailing,59 (1983), pp.22-39.Coauthored with Pat Kelly, R.Hise, and M.Gable.
"Some Generalized Functions for the Size Distribution of Income," Econometrica, 52 (1984), pp.647-663. Reprinted in Modeling Income Distributions and Lorenz Curves, Vol. 5 (2008), 37-56 in the series Economic Studies in Inequality, Social Exclusion and Well-Being, Springer: New York.
"The Impact of Measurement Error on the Distribution of Income," Advances in Econometrics, 3 (1984), pp.169-189.Coauthored with Dwight Israelsen and Whitney Newey.
"A Generalized Option Valuation Model for the Pricing of Bond Options," Review of Research in Futures Markets, 4 (1985), pp.60-73.Coauthored with Richard Bookstaber.
"Income Inequality in the U.S.:1948-80," Research in Labor Economics, Volume 8 (1986), pp. 85-140, JAI Press. Coauthored with R.J.Butler.
"Trends in Unemployment Duration Data," Review of Economics and Statistics, 68 (1986), 545-557. Coauthored with R.J.Butler.
"The Effects of Multicollinearity Upon the Properties of Structural Coefficient Estimators," Quantitative Economics: Essays in Honor of R.L.Basmann, JAI Press, 1986.Coauthored with R.S.Mariano and A.Tishler.
"Interdistributional Income Inequality," Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 5 (1987), 13-18. Coauthored with R. J. Butler.
"Model Selection: Some Generalized Distributions," Communications in Statistics, 16 (1987), 1049-1074. Coauthored with D. O. Richards.
"Some Generalized Models with Application to Reliability," Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, 16 (1987). Coauthored with Dale Richards.
"Some Generalized Mixture Distributions With An Application to Unemployment Duration," Review of Economics and Statistics, 69 (1987), 232-240. Coauthored with R.J.Butler.
"A General Distribution for Describing Security Price Returns," Brigham Young University:The Journal of Business, 60 (1987), 401-424. Coauthored with R.Bookstaber.
"Hazard Functions and Generalized Beta Distributions," IEEE Transactions on Reliability, 36 (1987), 463-466. Coauthored with D.O.Richards.
"Partially Adaptive Estimation of Regression Models via the Generalized T Distribution," Econometric Theory, 4 (1988), 428-457. Coauthored with Whitney Newey.
"Using Incomplete Moments to Measure Inequality," Journal of Econometrics, 42 (1989), 109-119. Coauthored with R. J. Butler.
"Partially Adaptive Estimation of ARMA Models," International Journal of Forecasting, 5 (1989), 217-230.
"Alternative Beta Estimation for the Market Model Using Partially Adaptive Techniques," Communications in Statistics, 18 (1989), 4039-4058. Coauthored with Ray Nelson.
"Regression Models for Positive Random Variables," Journal of Econometrics, 43 (1990), 227-251. Coauthored with R. J. Butler.
"Selecting Job Scheduling Algorithms: Beta Distribution Model for Service Times,” International Journal of System Sciences, 21 (1990), 439-446. Coauthored with William Giauque, James Hansen, and Mike Pritchett.
"Robust and Partially Adaptive Estimation of Regression Models," Review of Economics and Statistics. Coauthored with R. J. Butler, R. Nelson and S. White, 72 (1990), 321-327.
"Applications of the GB2 Family of Distributions in Modeling Insurance Loss Processes," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, 9 (1990), 257-272. Coauthored with B. Michael Pritchett, David Cummins and George Dionne.
"Some Statistical Distributions for Insured Losses," in Managing the Insolvency Risk of Insurance Companies, Kluwer Academic Press, 1991, 191-205.
"Option Pricing for Generalized Distributions," Communications in Statistics, 20 (1991), 4053-4068. Coauthored with R. Bookstaber.
"Parametric Models for Partially Adaptive Estimation with Skewed and Leptokurtic Residuals," Economics Letters, 37 (1991), 273-278.
"Liability Insurance Pricing and Risky Probability Distributions," in Cycles and Crises in Property/ Casualty Insurance: Causes and Implications, ed. J. David Cummins, Scott E. Harrington, Robert W. Klein, NAIC Publication #71, 1991. Coauthored with J. David Cummins.
"Generalized Qualitative Response Models with an Application to Consumer Credit Behavior," Journal of Economics and Business, 44 (1992), 47-62. Coauthored with Darral G. Clarke.
"Artificial Intelligence and Generalized Qualitative Response Models-an Empirical Test on Two Audit Decision Making Domains,” Models," Decision Sciences, 23 (1992), 708-723. Coauthored with Jim Hansen and Jim Stice.
"An Empirical Investigation of the Likelihood Ratio Test when the Boundary Condition is Violated," Communications in Statistics, Vol. 21 (1992), No. 3. Coauthored with Y. Xu.
"The Distribution of Income and Efficient Estimation," Research on Income Inequality, 2 (1992), 123-137.
"The Beta as a Model for the Distribution of Income," Research on Income Inequality, 2 (1992), 105-122.
"Identifying Financial Distress in the Insurance Industry: A Synthesis of Methodological and Empirical Issues," Journal of Risk and Insurance, 59 (1992), 543-574. Coauthored with Ran BarNiv. Received the 2002 Robert Mehr Research Award for the article which has withstood the test of time.
"Estimating Aggregate Automotive Income-Elasticities from Population Income-Share Elasticity," Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 11 (1993), 209-214. Coauthored with Robert F. Bordley.
"Predicting Insurance Insolvency Using Generalized Qualitative Response Models," Worker's Compensation Insurance: Claims, Costs, Prices and Regulation, Eds. David Durbin, Philip Borba, Kluwer Academic Press, 1993, pp. 223-241.
"A Comparison of Some Robust, Adaptive, and Partially Adaptive Estimators of Regression Models," Econometric Reviews, 12(1993), 103-124. Coauthored with Steven B. White.
"Beta Estimation in the Market Model: Skewness and Leptokurtosis." Communications in Statistics: Theory and Methods, 22:10 (1993). Coauthored with Ray D. Nelson.
"Some Forecasting Applications of Partially Adaptive Estimators of ARIMA Models." Economics Letters 45(1994), 155-160. Coauthored with Yexiao Xu.
"A Generalization of the Beta Distribution with Applications." The Journal of Econometrics, 66(1995), 133-152. Coauthored with Yexiao Xu. Errata - 69(1995), 427-8.
"The Distribution of Personal Income: Revisited." in Journal of Applied Econometrics. 70(1995), 201-204. Coauthored with Anand Mantrala.
"Mergers in the United States: A Case Study in Robust Time Series," Advances in Planning and Financial Forecasting. 6(1995), 95-107, Coauthored with John B. Guerard, Jr.
"Something New, Something Old: Parametric Models for the Size Distribution of Income," Journal of Income Distribution 6(1996), 91-103. Coauthored with Robert F. Bordley and Anand Mantrala.
“A Generalized Qualitative-Response Model and an Analysis of Management Fraud,” Management Science 42(1996), 1022-1031. Coauthored with J. V. Hansen, W. F. Messier Jr. and T. B. Bell.
“A Comparison of Semi-parametric and Partially Adaptive Estimators of the Censored Regression Model with Possibly Skewed and Leptokurtic Error Distributions," Economics Letters51(1996). 153-159. Coauthored with Yexiao Xu.
“Probability Distributions for Financial Models,” Statistical Methods in Finance, Vol. 14 of Handbook of Statistics, pp. 427-461. Edited by G.S. Maddala and C.R. Rao, Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1996.
“An Application and Comparison of Some Flexible Parametric and Semi-Parametric Qualitative
Response Models,” Economics Letters 53 (1996), 145-152.
"A Review of Categorical Models for Classification Issues in Accounting and Finance," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 13(1999), 39-62. Coauthored with Ran BarNiv.
“Time Series Prediction with Genetic-Algorithm Designed Neural Networks: An Empirical Comparison with Modern Statistical Models,’ Computational Intelligence, 15(1999), 171-184. Coauthored with James V. Hansen and Ray D. Nelson.
“An Application and Comparison of Some Flexible Parametric and Semiparametric Qualitative Response Models with Heteroskedasticity,” International Journal of Systems Sciences, 31(2000), 27-33. Coauthored with James Hansen.
“A Flexible Parametric GARCH Model with an Application to Exchange Rates.” Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16(2001), 521-536. Coauthored with Kai Li Wang, Christopher Fawson, and Christoper Barrett.
“Some Experimental Evidence on the Performance of GA-Designed Neural Networks.” Coauthored with James V. Hansen. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 13(2001), 307-321.
“A Generalized Model for Predictive Data Mining,” Coauthored with James V. Hansen. Information Systems Frontiers: A Journal of Research and Innovation, 4(2002), 179-186.
“A Comparison of Partially Adaptive and Reweighted Least Median of Squares Estimation of Regression Models,” Econometric Reviews, 22(2003), 115-134. Coauthored with Brian Boyer and Whitney Newey.
“A Comparison of Parametric Models of Income Distributions across Countries and Over Time,” Estadistica, 55(2003), 135-152. Coauthored with Ripsy Bandourian and Robert Turley.
“Estimating Faculty Salary Distributions: An Application of Order Statistics,” Journal of Income Distribution, 11 (2003), 43-51. Coauthored with Mark L. Pocock and Clayne L. Pope
“Measurement Error and the Distribution of Income,” Journal of Income Distribution, 12(2003), 21-31. Coauthored with L. Dwight Israelsen.
“Some Variations on Standard Income Measurement Error Models,”Journal of Income Distribution. 13(2004), 116-131. Coauthored with Brigham Frandsen.
“Estimating Hazard Functions when the Data are Discrete,”Communications and Statistics: Simulation and Computation, 34(2005), 451-463. Coauthored with Scott Grimshaw, Grant McQueen, and Steven Thorley.
“Forecasting Asymmetries in Aggregate Stock Market Returns: Evidence from Conditional Skewness,” Journal of Empirical Finance, 12(2005), 666-685. Coauthored with James Hueng.
“Partially Adaptive Robust Estimation of Regression Models and Applications,” European Journal of Operational Research, 170 (2006), 132-143. Coauthored with James Hansen and Robert S. Turley.
“Some Evidence on Forecasting Time Series with Support Vector Machines,” Journal of the Operational Research Society, 57 (2006), 1053-1063. Coauthored with James V. Hansen and Ray Nelson.
“A Semantic Web Data Retrieval Implementation with an Adaptive Model for Supporting Agent Decision Structures,” Electronic Commerce Research , 7(2007), 5-16. Coauthored with Albrecht, C, Dean, D., Hansen, J., and B. Anderson.
“The Impact of Taxes and Transfer Payments on the Distribution of Income: a Parametric Comparison,” The Journal of Economic Inequality, 5 (2007), 353-369. Coauthored with Samuel Dastrup and Rachel Hartshorn.
“Some Flexible Models for Partially Adaptive Estimators of Econometric Models,” Coauthored with Christian B. Hansen and Panayiotis Theodossiou.
“Risky Loss Distributions and Modeling the Pay-out Tail.”Review of Applied Economics3 (2007). Coauthored with J. David Cummins and Craig Merrill.
“The Generalized Beta Distribution as a Model for the Distribution of Income: Estimation of Related Measures of Inequality.”Modeling Income Distributions and Lorenz Curves, 5(2008), 147-166. Economic Studies in Inequality: Social Exclusion and Well-Being, Springer: New York, editor Jacques Silber. Coauthored with Michael Ransom.
“Evaluation of Robust Regression Estimation Methods and Intercept Bias: A Capital Asset Pricing Model Application,” Multinational Finance Journal, 15(2009), 293-321. Coauthored with Richard Michefelder and Panayiotis Theodossiou.
“Robust Estimation with Flexible Parametric Distributions: Estimation of Utility Stock Betas,” Quantitative Finance, 2010(4), 375-387. Coauthored with Richard Michefelder and Panayiotis Theodossiou.
“Instrumental Variables Estimation with Flexible Distributions,”Journal of Economics and Business Statistics, 28 (2010), 13-25. Coauthored with Chris Hansen and Whitney Newey.
“Partially Adaptive Econometric Methods for Regression and Classification,” Computational Economics, 36 (2), (2010), 153-169. Coauthored with James Hansen, Brad Larsen, and Peter Theodossiou.
“Distributional Characteristics: Just a Few More Moments,” TheAmerican Statistician, 65(2011), 96-103. Coauthored with Patrick Turley. Letter to the Editor, The American Statistician, 67(2013), 114.
“Machine Learning Methods for Detecting Patterns of Management Fraud,” Computational Intelligence, 28 (2012), 505-527. Coauthored with David G. Whiting, James V.Hansen, Conan Albrecht, and W.S. Albrecht.
“Skewness and Kurtosis Properties of Income Distribution Models,” the Review of Income and Wealth, 2013, 59 (2), 360-374. DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4991.2011.0478.x. Coauthored with Jeff Sorensen and Patrick Turley.
“Partially Adaptive Estimation of Interval Censored Regression Models,” Computational Economics, 42(2013), 119-131. DOI: 10.1007/s10614-012-9324-0. Coauthored with Jason Cook.
“Skewness-kurtosis bounds for the skewed generalized t and related distributions,” Statistics and Probability Letters. 83 (2013), 2129-2134. . Coauthored with Sean Kerman.
“Partially Adaptive Estimation of the Censored Regression Model,” Econometric Reviews, 33(2014), 732-750. 10.1080/07474938.2012.690691. Coauthored with Randall A. Lewis.
“Skewness-Kurtosis Bounds for the EGB1, EGB2, and Special Cases,” forthcoming in Communications in Statistics:Theory and Methods, forthcoming. Coauthored with Sean Kerman.
“Heteroskedasticity and Distributional Assumptions in the Censored Regression Model,” forthcoming in Communications in Statistics: Computation and Simulation,” Coauthored with Hieu Nguyen.
“Option Pricing and Distribution Characteristics,” Computational Economics, 43(2015), 579-595. (DOI) 10.1007/s10614-014-9441-z. Coauthored with David Mauler.
“Partially Adaptive Estimation of Quantile Regression Models,” forthcoming in Communications in Statistics. Coauthored with David Mauler and Logan Tatham.
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Revise and resubmit for publication or being revised to be submitted
“Distributional Assumptions and the Estimation of Contingent Valuation Models,” with Daniel Walton. Revise and resubmit toEnvironmental and Resource Economics.
“Locally Efficient Jackknife GMM,” with Brad Larsen and Whitney Newey. We have been working on this paper for some time, but feel we can submit it soon.
“Interval Response Data in Experimental Economics,”coauthored with Olga Stoddard and Daniel Walton. This was rejected by Experimental Economics in September. We are looking for an additional numerical example and will resubmit.
“A Generalized Regression Specification using the Skewed Generalized T Distribution,” coauthored with Carter Davis and Daniel Walton. We are incorporating some referee comments and will resubmit.
“A Generalized Ordered Response Model,” with Carla Johnston and Kramer Quist. We are rerunning some Monte Carlo simulations and will resubmit it.
“Academic Salary Compression: are You in Danger?,” with Jeff Sorensen. We have had a hard time finding a home for this piece, but are updating thiswith 2012-2015data and will submit to a new journal.
Projects in progress
“A Reexamination of Willingness to Pay: Exxon-Valdez.”
“A Comparison of Estimators using Partially Adaptive and Mixture Methods.”
“Some Generalized Multivariate Statistical Models”
“Some Mixture Models.”
A survey paper on “Statistical Distributions in Finance”
More generally, Functional forms, estimation techniques, and Stochastic Specifications in Econometric Models
Book Review
Dictionary and Bibliography of Statistical Distributions, G.P. Patil, M.T. Boswell, S.W. Joshi, M.V. Ratnaparkhi and J.J.J. Roux, vols. 1, 2, 3, Fairland, Maryland: International Co-operative Publishing House, 1984. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 5 (1987), 161-162.
Proceedings or published talks
"Partially Adaptive Estimation of ARMA Time Series Models," 1987 Proceedings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, August 1987 Meetings of the ASA, pp. 649-653.
"Statistical Distributions: How Deviant Can They Be?" Distinguished Faculty Lecture, Brigham Young University, January 1987, printed in BYU Studies.
"An Empirical Investigation of the Size of the Likelihood Ratio Test," with Yexiao Xu, 1991 Proceedings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, August 1991 Meetings of the ASA, pp. 135-139.
"A Generalization of the Beta of the First and Second kind with an Application," Proceedings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, August 1992 Meetings of the ASA, pp. 155-160.
"A Comparison of Some Alternative Estimators for the Censored Regression Model." 1993 Proceedings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, August 1993 Meetings of the ASA. Coauthored with Yexiao Xu.
"Some Comparisons and Applications of Semi-Parametric and Flexible Parametric Estimation Procedures in Econometric Models," 1994 Proceedings of the Business and Economics Statistics Section, August 1994 Meetings of the ASA.
“An Application of Generating Functions in Statistics,” Rocky Mountain Mathematics Conference on Discrete Mathematics, Laramie, Wyoming. July 1995.